As the stricken Carnival Triumph is towed back to port in Mobile, Ala., the 3,143 passengers and 1,086 crew members stranded aboard are understandably restless. They’ve been stuck on board the ship since Sunday morning, when a fire in the ship’s engine room knocked out its propulsion system, leaving it stranded in the Gulf of Mexico.

Reports of the passengers’ ordeal over the ensuing four days have been harrowing. According to text messages sent to relatives and interviews with people on board, the smell of rotting food abounds. Toilets are backed up, forcing many to use red biohazard bags to go to the bathroom. With the air-conditioning system offline, the staterooms are too hot to sleep in, and some passengers have reportedly moved their mattresses to the deck. According to a statement released by Carnival, only one dining room has reliable power for serving hot coffee and, sporadically, hot food.

But possibly the worst part about the past week for the passengers of the Carnival Triumph is that there’s been no escape. So far, only two passengers have been moved off the ship: Rachel Alderete, 54, who was in desperate need of emergency kidney dialysis, was transported to the Triumph’s sister ship, the Carnival Legend, on Tuesday to be taken to Texas for treatment. The following day, a second passenger was taken off the ship because of a pre-existing medical condition, Carnival spokeswoman Joyce Oliva tells TIME. Both were moved to other Carnival ships that had diverted their courses in order to assist with the rescue mission.

However, these emergency measures underscore a question on the minds of many observers: Why not take all the passengers off the stricken Carnival Triumph?

It turns out that it’s not that simple. Just moving a single passenger is a delicate dance, according to Lieutenant Lily Zepeda, public-affairs officer for the U.S. Coast Guard District 8, which is coordinating the response to the cruise-ship crisis from its New Orleans–based office. The Coast Guard cutter Vigorous, a 210-ft. (64 m) vessel that was called on to escort the cruise ship just hours after it was disabled, launched a small boat to courier Alderete from the Triumph to the Legend. “Our small boat would come alongside one of the cruise ships, take the passenger and then go alongside the other cruise ship and drop the passenger off,” Zepeda explains to TIME.

The whole process can take 15 minutes to an hour for just one person, making it an understandably arduous task to move all 4,200 people on board. (One passenger wasn’t even able to make the trip: according to the New York Times, Alderete’s sister was supposed to accompany her, but choppy waters prevented her departure.) And that’s assuming everyone is capable of the move. Among the passengers are likely many “that are really young, really old. We don’t know the physical fitness of everyone,” says Zepeda. All told, offloading the passengers with the help of the Vigorous could have taken longer than towing the ship back to shore.

Still, it couldn’t have been easy for the passengers on board the Triumph to watch as three working Carnival cruise liners stopped by to drop off hot prepared meals and nonperishable food. Unfortunately, none of the ships in the area had enough cabins to take on the Triumph’s 3,143 guests. “If it wasn’t a life-threatening medical emergency, we probably wouldn’t have gotten involved” in transferring passengers in the first place, Zepeda says.

Despite the discomfort of the Triumph’s five-day saga — by the end of which the ship’s sewage system had backed up and breakfast menus occasionally consisted of cold waffles and candy, according to the New York Times — conditions never got dire enough to prompt an evacuation. Lifeboats are deployed only in the case of emergency, and both Carnival and the Coast Guard agree that this situation didn’t fit the bill. “We evaluated a wide range of options, but the safest and most expedient solution was towing the ship back to port,” says Oliva. And despite its shortcomings, the Triumph “is still a stable and safe platform,” according to Zepeda. “Unfortunately, despite the discomfort, it’s probably the safest place for them to be, rather than trying to transfer them back and forth via another method.”

Three tugboats have been slowly pulling the cruise ship back to port — a mission that ended up taking five days and was hampered Thursday afternoon just miles offshore by a broken tow line. For the passengers on board the Carnival Triumph, the end of the voyage can’t come soon enough.

Maybe if Obama wasn't busy golfing and playing political games, he would have ordered a heli-evacuation. I bet that ship could have found space to take two chinook choppers at a time- that would be 20-30 people per trip. Maybe this would have been a good rescue excercise for the Navy-oops, they couldn't leave port because they couldn't afford the $24/gal bio-diesel.

While
I am extremely greatful for our service men and women for
their commitment to our country and fellow countrymen, but by
comparing what we went through on board the Carnival Triumph to life on a
Naval vessel is like comparing apples to soccer balls.

I never signed up for military service, because I knew I was not cut out for it. I don't know about everyone else on the ship, but I paid Carnival to
provide me with a vacation, a little pampering, and over-priced drink
deliveries to where ever I was lounging in the sun - relaxing. This was going to be my first true vacation in ages. My kids were going to spend a couple of days with their grandparents, while I enjoyed a couple of days off work, basketball practices, and nightly homework sessions, getting some much appreciated R&R, reading, and sun bathing. And while yes, Carnival has refunded me the money we spent toward the cruise and is supposed to be giving
me an extra $500 on top of it, that money will barely cover my lost wages from
missed work, the extended house/dog sitting, child care expenses, and giant
cell phone bill I'll be getting from trying to reach the people who were
caring for my children and pets while the other ships were there providing us
with provisions and temporary cell service.

ALSO, I don't ever remember hearing
from any of my friends who have served on naval ships (or reports in the news) of having to sleep on deck, because they had sewage backing up into
their rooms, in high temps that caused the bacteria growth to happen almost
right before their eyes.

I also don't ever remember hearing
that the Navy had problems running enough power to their food storage
(refrigeration) or grills to allow the refrigerated foods to cook to proper
temperatures. Maybe they don't have food services on ships in the Navy
and they survive on MREs all the time. I would have been happy to see an MRE after some of the ridiculous meals we had offered to us.

My issue with Carnival is that this is not the first fire that has knocked out
their engine system and left customers drifting in the ocean. The
Carnival Splendor had the same fate back in November of 2010. They
KNEW from that ships engine failure, that their emergency backup generators
could not run their water, toilet, food refrigeration, and kitchen systems. Those 4 systems are ESSENTIAL when you have 4,000 people on a ship. And
yet, they did nothing to fix it. In 2 1/2 years, they did not find a way
to add more backup generator power to their ships, for in case this type of
catastrophic engine failure happened again. Instead they waited until day
4 of drifting at sea, when we were finally within helicopter range
to have the Coast Guard drop us another (rather small) generator, that they eventually
got the toilet system hooked to Thursday morning (about 5 minutes before the
NTSB and Coast Guard boarded the ship.) THAT is my issue with Carnival
and what we went through on that cruise ship. Had they addressed the
lack of generator power, our extra 5 days at sea, being drug painfully slowly
back to shore, would not have been in a gray water soaked, sewage backed up
ship with out hot clean water and safe food to eat. THEN I wouldn't have
had much to complain about.

Yes, it could have been much worse. Aside from a couple of people
with broken bones due to falls, several bouts of food poisoning and
one possible stroke victim, we all got off the ship safely - EVENTUALLY. But that
doesn't mean that Carnival should be let off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

While you're answering questions on this topic, mind telling us why the passengers couldn't just do their #1s and 2s overboard? It wouldn't have been hard for the crew to jerry-rig outhouses for them to do so, no sane environmental authority would have complained and the number of lawsuits Carnival can expect would have been lower.

The outcome, all are save in port is a good outcome. The many troubles and inconveniences are hard to take but consider the alternatives or what could have been. The decision making process of the ship construction was flawed. A huge vessel that houses more than 4200 people needs to have greater versatility than one engine room for possible problems such as they experienced. Hope they powers that make these decisions will consider this.

CRY Me a river.. You have got to be kidding me.. Are we as a society just that spoiled? You are dealing with a SHIP that has 4000 people on it. A minor mishap, considering that this is larger than MOST small cities in the USA. The next largest ship that can hold >4000 people is an Aircraft Carrier!!! Boom we had a small fire. People without A\C for 4 days. Spoiled food. HOW abouut the fact -0- Fatalities. GETTING REIMBURSED for the trip +++++ FREE CRUISE!! And yet Society is screaming to high heavens on how they couldnt get off of the ship. How they should SUE for 4 days of discomfort. NO wonder we have society killing off each other for Gym shoes. I guess that is just another reason for being a US Marine. in which 4 days like this actually would be a VACATION..

There are several inaccuracies of this article, so I wouldn't take anything it says seriously. I was on the ship.

1. None of the passengers who needed medical transport were not taken off the ship Tuesday, becuase none of the other fleet were there Tuesday. We had one ship come Sunday afternoon with Supplies, and 2 ships Monday. There were no provisions brought to us on Tuesday. Wednesday, the coast guard began dropping provisions onto our deck via helicopter. Originally they were going to bring in a 4th ship with provisions, but they determined it was much faster for the helicopter to bring them than it was to transfer between ships and they called off that ship.

2. Wednesday the cold waffles were a welcome sight, but I never saw them serving candy in a meal. They did empty the candy shop out and toss bags of candy out during the little Mardi Gras parade they put on for us to try and brighten our Fat Tuesday..

3. There were not 3 tug boats towing us, there were 2. The third tug didn't show up til I believe Wednesday night when we got closer to the Gulf.

Maybe the quotes they got from people were correct, but their information was not.

My question is: Why was this ship entirely dependent on one source of power? I fly airliners, and we have several sources of electrical power. And, that's on a 50,000 lb. aircraft, not a 900+ foot ocean liner. Shouldn't there be a separate generator, located away from the main engine room, that could be started if the engine room is compromised? The generator would have the power to provide electricity to a certain area of the ship, providing enough services to keep the ship's passengers and crew okay until docking.

If they had used copters many would have died from fright.....I think Carnival did what they could with what they had. Meaning they made decisions based on limited data...how long to get tugs, how long to pull, how many lines would break, how much power can be restored, etc. and the very real fact that they did not have great choices, just a bunch of prolematic ones. I would want to know if they had a closer port they could have taken passengers to and did they make their trip more miserable to save Carnival from having to move the ship twice?

I've been on 6 cruises and this will not put me off it; however, I think Carnival really needs to figure out why they have had the three most recent disasters (2 fires and Costa). Perhaps their safety protocols etc need to be enhanced.

When the vessel was disabled it was 90 miles from land, assuming a helo base was close by that was 90 miles there and 90 back, say two hours per round trip at 20 people per trip just do the math how, long would that have taken?

Add to that the vessel was drifting North East at about 6 knots that would be opening up the distance all the time. What is the endurance of a Chinook? Again do the math.

Now add to the built in dangers of helo operations, unless it is a medical emergency, as far as I am concerned it is a no go.

Carnival ships have had 4 engine room fires that have left
passengers without the amenities that you list:

Celebration –1995

Tropicale – 1999

Carnival Splendor and Carnival Triumph –recently.

The fire on the Ecstasy although it immobilized the vessel
was not an engine room fire. The fire burnt through the control cables to the
electric propulsion system.

When the Celebration caught fire the Ecstacy was just about
to sail. Carnival cancelled that cruise and sent the passengers home with
compensation. They then sent the Ecstasy to the Celebration as a rescue ship.
Even so the passengers on the Celebration still had to contend with conditions
similar to yours for two days. I do not know if Carnival considers that
exercise a success or not. I can only surmise that should they have considered
it a success they might well have done it again had a ship been available.
Should they not have considered it a success I can only imagine there is
something of a ‘never again’ attitude.

When the Tropicale’s fire was extinguished Carnival did
helicopter some electrical specialists and equipment to the vessel to try to
restore some services. I am far from conversant with the results but I do not
believe that they achieved very much. Again I do not know how Carnival views
the results.

I understand, I retired in 2005 and have deliberately not
kept myself ‘up to date’ so I am not sure when, but I believe regulations are
coming in, they may even be ‘in’ by now requiring new vessels to have some back
up provision for some of the services you name but I am not sure of the
details.

Any questions, please ask? The worst I can say is that I do
not know.

My father always used to say ‘There is no such
thing as a silly question’. I have tried to follow that. A question is not ‘silly’
if the questioner does not know the answer, but a statement can be damned silly.

@Time2talk Perhaps you are being sarcastic, but "glad they made it" sounds so much like they were in real danger. They were not in real danger after the fire was extinguished. They did have uncomfort and were inconvenienced....like going to the Motor Vehicle place for five days. But unlike MV, they got a free vacation out of it, and a great story to tell forever. Doubt these folks lives were half as worse as the people in Hurricanes Sandi or Katrina, except again, no free vacations came those folks way. A bunch of whining. Please don't compare to homeless. Homeless never go home, never get a free vacation, hotel stay, etc.

Actually on a shp, commercial. They can only use Diesel fuel. ITS not like a Aircraft carrier with Nuclear. OR!!! ANY other ship commercial wise. There has never been a need for Redundant Generators. ITS not like this happens EVERY Day. Ships do indeed break down. While on Deployment in 92, We had 2 US Navy Ships break down in the MIDDLE of the ATLANTIC ocean. You can just imagine the site of towing a ship with 20+ AAV's on it. Each AAV is like 15 tons, AND it was a FLAT Bottom ship, meaning that even a small wave= INSTANT SEA SICKNESS, as it tossed ALOT.. Its not like a cruise ship has the neccessary equipment onboard to fix a catastrophic failure. AND!!! IF it did had the redundancy, the COST of the ship would rise 10-15%, MEANING Higher fares.. HIGHER COSTS to operate. .. Please remember.. THE LATEST GREATEST Aircraft Carrier holds 5000 people. BUT the BERTHING on those are HORRIBLE compared to a Cruise ship. The FEEDING alone of 4000 people on a cruise ship, with exotic food is challenging enough. These are built for Luxury, nothing else. When something breaks, MURPHY's LAW applies..

@jmilleratp Vessels such as the TRUIMPH are required to have an emergency generator remote from the main source(s) of power (usually somewhere fairly high up) That generator supplies 'essential services' only, not hot food, refrigeration, air conditioning or power outlets for the passengers' cell phones or ladies hair dryers, neither does it supply power for the sewage system or fresh water supply. It is my understanding that that generator was working satisfactorily.

As some hot food was prepared and some fresh water flowed I can only assume that the ships staff did succeed in running some temporary electrical lines or connections.

We will have to wait to find for the investigation to be completed to find out exactly what went wrong with the rest of it.

Sorry I missed the bit about about redundant generators, for commercial vessels.There is a requirement and it applies to both passenger and cargo vessels but as most larger passenger vessels are twin screw the requirement is mostly automatically met. In essence what it says is that the failure of the largest or any other single generator shall not render the vessel unable to proceed at a navigable speed and provide power for essential services (which does not include sewage treatment). The 'Triumph' would have met this requirement easily with one generator out of action. The reason the 'Triumph' was disabled appears to have been some cause other than the failure of the generator.

Actually many commercial vessels use more than one grade of 'diesel'. The very large diesels actually burn a residual fuel, which is essentially what is left over after the refining process and the generators burn a higher grade of diesel, sometimes referred to as MDO, which is heavier, and cheaper, than that burnt in trucks, excavators etc. Some ships, those with high speed diesel engines for propulsion and/or generators use the same grade as the trucks etc. A few commercial vessels do have the ability to burn gasoline but normally only in very small quantities under very strictly controlled conditions.

Thank you for your response. I also believe that PhilBlank did not read to whom the questions were addressed.

For what it is worth at this time I believe that PhilBlank's claim that the vessel caught fire at the position given at 00.23 is totally false. No other evidence supports this.

The first piece of evidence against the claim is that the USCG cutter sent to the vessel appears to have found it without delay in, or very close to, the position that the Triumph had indicated. I do not see the USCG being very happy to find a vessel, such as the Triumph over 100 miles from where they expect. I could go on but will not bore you.

One final titbit, I have slept on deck on vessels in the tropics because the vessels' concerned had no air-conditioning full stop. Therefore I do have some idea what that bit of the experience was like.

Phil, I think he was directing the questions about being on the ship to me.

I was not aware of any slowdowns or anything, because we were sleeping. We turned in fairly early Saturday night.

I don't know exactly when the engines stopped running, I just know that when they called for the Alpha Team to go to the Engine Room it was 5:31am, and my husband said "That's not good, I felt the engines stop a while ago."

I also do not know of any time adjustments either. I am fairly certain we stayed in Central Standard time the entire time.

I am not 'in' the ship's engine room or on the ship and I have no idea
if the ship's engine powers the ship directly or if it is an engine
driving a generator that powers an electric motor that turns the ship's
drive shaft and prop. And I don't know if there is battery back-up to
turn the shaft and the prop.

where the top speed is given as 22.5 knots. Top speed is normally given with the propulsion motors producing their maximum power and the ship tracking system he is quoting gives the speed at 00.23 as 22.1 knots. This would lead me to believe that the vessel was almost at her maximum with one generator out of action. Which would mean that in effect the vessel had a 'spare' main generator. This is not unusual and allows a vessel to maintain its maximum speed, when required, with one generator 'down for maintenance'.

Could you please give us/me any indication of when the generators/engines stopped?

The ship was not running on all 6 engines. The on board mechanics, who had little to do after the fire but hang out on deck had said they were in the process of rebuilding Engine 5 before the fire happened.

I also don't know that the fire started at 5:30. 5:31 was when they made the call across the ship for the Alpha Team to respond to the Engine Room - but the engines had stopped running for some time before that.

Thank you for your thoughts and the references to the two articles. The first of which I should point out does say what you have printed,that is that the fire occurred at 05.30 it also says "the ship was left adrift about 150 miles off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula". Not the 7 miles you are claiming.

Now the possibility does exist that the times being quoted are for different time zones but for the distances involved 5.00 hours is not reasonable and would in fact give a longer time period rather than shorter one.

It 'WAS' traveling about 22 knots, then the fire hit and killed almost all power to the engines.

That is the time the system gave me, I can't change it to suit you.

If there is no power the GPS tracking shuts down. On Sunday, February 10, 2013 at 5:30 a.m. Central Standard Time the ship suffered a fire in the aft engine room. Although the fire was automatically extinguished, it resulted in a loss of power and propulsion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_Triumph

Yes the position you gave was at 00.23 and the fire occurred 4.5 to 5.0 hours later. The ship was not sitting at that point all that time. Traveling at approximately 22.0 knots she would have been about 100 miles away heading for Galveston.

The Carnival Triumph is diesel electric and has 6 generators which supply the propulsion motors and the 'ships services'. I believe the ship could still function on 4 generators but at a reduced speed. There are no back up batteries for the propulsion motors.

Again I thank you for your time and the information that you supplied, however I believe you are in error in your statement that the power was lost when the vessel was 7 miles from the Mexican coast. Why the tracking system you have relied on for that information did not post anything after 00.23 I do not know. Perhaps the ship did not transmit for some reason, I do not know.

The time I gave you was from the ship tracking log using the GPS signal sent out over a radio and on a computer, its pretty accurate and I use it to track ships in my area so I know when they are coming into port.

I am not 'in' the ship's engine room or on the ship and I have no idea if the ship's engine powers the ship directly or if it is an engine driving a generator that powers an electric motor that turns the ship's drive shaft and prop. And I don't know if there is battery back-up to turn the shaft and the prop.

What you map shows is an artist's rendering of what he was given to him or her either by other ships or plains in the area.

Thank you for that. I do not have a chart only an atlas but that position is just to the East of the Yucatan Peninsular. What I have a problem with that position is timed at 00.23 the fire is variously reported as having started between 5.00am and 5.30am, 4.5-5.0 hours later during which the vessel can be presume to have been making approximately 22.0 knots. Would you not agree?

At the time the reading was taken, she was traveling at 22.1 knots with a heading of 37 degrees.

A pulled this up a few days after the news said she was disabled.

That is the last I have and there is nothing else I can give you as the system lost the signal when she lost power and they only keep records until she reappeared again in Mobile, Alabama and most likely now on shore power.

I printed it out on 02,14,2013 at 17:18EST and only have two printed copies of the tracking.

That is what I would like. For the point of this discussion I am not interested in where the ship is now but where it was when you claim it lost power, the lat. and long. will give me that.

Actually what I was trying to find was how far the ship moved from the time you say power was lost to where it was 12 hours later. Any more than about 40 miles and she was under power for some of that time.

The reports I have heard are that she was drifting North East at about 2 knots.